


Trace My Skin, Touch My Soul

by Gemini_Baby



Series: Dick & Dami Week [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: (kind of), Abandonment Issues, Angst, Bittersweet, Character Study, Damian Wayne Has Abandonment Issues, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson Has Abandonment Issues, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Fear of Abandonment, Gen, Introspection, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29975616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemini_Baby/pseuds/Gemini_Baby
Summary: Anyone Dick ever loves, dies. It has started feeling like a curse at this point. Except the punishment is received by the ones who get tainted by his love.Damian is not sure what to think about his soulmarks. He doesn’t want to think about the disdain they must feel when Damian’s soulmark marks their body, taints their skin and burns their soul.OR: In a world where soul mark appear the moment someone starts loving a person, Dick Grayson has too many and Damian Wayne has too few. Dick fears for the person whenever their mark appears on his skin. Damian dreads anyone being marred by his mark.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Series: Dick & Dami Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2198913
Comments: 7
Kudos: 105
Collections: DickAndDamiWeek2021





	Trace My Skin, Touch My Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 4 of Dick & Dami Week 2021 using the prompt, " **Abandonment Issues** " and the dialogue prompt, **"Please don't leave me."** for the event
> 
> (This 'verse is def. turning into a series later)
> 
> Thank you so much veds for the beta-help <3 <3
> 
> I hope you all enjoy <3

Anyone Dick ever loves, dies. It has started feeling like a curse at this point. Except the punishment is received by the ones who get tainted by his love.

Maybe Dick should stop loving people. So, it won’t kill them.

Oh, if the ability to just not love someone were that easy.

_ He wants to love. _

_ But he doesn’t want to kill. _

He has lost so many people he loved that whenever a warm feeling buzzes in his heart and a soulmark appears on his body and glows, Dick gets a bittersweet feeling. His heart is a paradox, both throbbing with excitement and sinking with dread whenever he feels love thrumming in his veins and a soulmark marking his body.

  
  
  
The seagreen coloured nightwing symbol adorns his chest and spreads its wings all the way to the second and third fingers of his hands. It is similar to his old uniform with the finger stripes, that Dick had to get replaced and a new one made after a surgery when he had broken his hip. Dick had been sad for not having that design anymore, but he had been more bitter when he had noticed how much wider the waistband area had been for the uniform. He had hated his body so much those days. Had despised even the existence of a mirror and had avoided them.

Now, as he stands before his bathroom mirror, there’s no bitterness. Only love and warm feelings that he has come to associate with the kid, as he traces the bird symbol on his chest with his fingers. 

The sea green glows and it looks so alluring as Dick looks at in the mirror. Damian loves him too.

Dick takes a deep breath and resumes tracing it all the way to the veins that lead to his fingers. He often finds himself tracing the pattern.

He is proud that it decorates his body. And even prouder that it glows.

“Soulmarks glow when your soulmate loves you back”, his mother’s voice echoes in his ears followed by his own giggling tinkling like little bells from the past.

“Look, your soulmarks on my body are glowing right now”, Dick had replied. He had always been in awe of his parent’s soulmarks. On the inside of his wrist were a couple of European Robins in a nest, their beaks and bodies forming a heart and making the nest a home. They glowed.

“They also glow when your soulmate feels a surge of affection towards you. Those moments when they are overcome by the love, by the tenderness and by all the feelings that ‘love’ is a very small word for, in those moments...you will often find your soulmark glow so bright that they’ll light up the dark corners of your heart,” Dick’s father had said to him, as he picked Dick up by the armpits and then placed him on his shoulders.

Dick’s legs rested on either side of his father’s head and his hands gripped his father's hair, holding them for balance, and his father walked the whole ground, where they had set camps, like that. All the while Dick giggled and kicked his feet against his father’s chest, one too many times, and his parents’ soulmarks had glowed all that time. They had not dimmed at all, even when in an attempt to balance himself, Dick had pulled his dad’s hair hard and his dad swore in confusion and pain. Or even when he had kicked his father’s jaw in excitement to get down from his shoulders and go race with his mother, tackling her in the process.

The european robins, the nest, the heart shape, it all had glowed so bright, even as his mother scolded him, even when his dad rubbed his jaw to lessen the pain of the impact. 

* * *

Damian has only had a few soulmarks. He can count them on the fingers of his one hand. And he has hurt everyone he has loved.

The people he loves...they don’t stay in his life either. Most of them wish, Damian had not entered their lives in return.

  
  


Damian is not sure what to think about his soulmarks. He doesn’t want to think about the disdain they must feel when Damian’s soulmark marks their body, taints their skin and burns their soul.

Damian either has soulmarks of a person or he doesn’t. Some of his soulmarks come and go with time.

Grandfather’s mark would sometimes appear on his collarbones, after Damian would accomplish something. Green wings would colour his collarbones as the red of the blood would coat his fingers. The soulmark would vanish some minutes or hours later, every time.

It seemed like he had to buy Grandfather's love, and the payment was how much blood he could spill in that moment. 

Maybe...maybe Grandfather’s soulmark was never permanent or long lasting on him because Grandfather didn’t want to share a piece of soul with Damian. But he sure wanted to do that when it came to possession and control of Damian’s body.

People love pearls. Not empty shells which are not of any use to them.

And that was what Damian had been. Just a shell of a body.

Mother’s soulmark was an intricate pattern in the form of a ring on the first finger of his right hand. It had always been there. And had never vanished. It had often glowed, even when her actions had inadvertently hurt him.

It was still there. Even after she had disowned him.

It had always decorated his finger. A ring of neon green colour, around his finger.

Green.

Nature. Good luck. Health.

Jealousy.

Toxicity.

Death.

Immortality.

Nature. Toxicity.

Death. Immortality…

There was much to think about her mark, Damian was sure of it.

But for once, Damian didn’t want to think about something.

He just wanted to be him. And be loved.

For who he is.

And not for what he can do for them.

Or what he can do to change himself to fit their mould and earn their love.

One mark had always glowed, ever since Damian was a baby. It had never faded (thankfully).

It had always been there. And had not yet vanished.

A paint palette on his right palm glows. It constantly glows.

Damian hugs his knees to his chest and curls up under his bed. 

He remembers those years before he had come to Gotham. The sunrise glowing on Ravi’s neck. The sunrise glowing, looking like it was rising from his collar.

Damian’s mark on Ravi would always glow.

His heart sinks as he thinks about, not for the first time, the fact that Ravi couldn’t see Damian’s soulmark glowing. Always glowing where it sat on Ravi’s jugular vein. All because Damian didn’t stop his grandfather from blinding Ravi.

Damian’s breathing quickens and his heart beat feels weird, and he rocks himself, the ball he has curled up into, back and forth.

Ravi had taught him how to appreciate colours and in return, what Damian had done? Damian had taken away the colours of the world from him.

As he rocks himself back and forth, the blue Indian Robin on the inside of his left wrist glows. 

Blinking the tears in his eyes, Damian's attention is diverted to the soul mark which has left him in awe more often than not. 

He doesn't have his Father's soulmark. He Didn't have it after his first meeting, or the second meeting, or the third.

But he has this soul mark. An Indian Robin of blue and yellow colours. On the veins of the left hand that connect directly to his heart. 

An Indian Robin. 

Blue. Yellow. 

Discowing's colours. 

Grayson's. 

_ Richard's.  _

It often glows. 

Damian both loves it and is afraid to love it. 

Richard loving him…it would mean Richard would leave him one day too. 

Many days, his bed witnesses him often hiding under it, rubbing over the soul mark of Robin gently, murmuring, "please don't leave me." 

It's hollow, Damian knows. 

Maybe it's one of the rules of the world. Anyone who loves Damian will leave him. 

While he fears Grayson abandoning him one day, he also can't help but think about how he has never seen Richard with his soul mark.  Even though Damian loves him so much. 

Maybe this is better this way. Grayson is not yet tainted by Damian's love. He is safe. Maybe…maybe that would mean Grayson won't leave. And maybe…with all the things Grayson is going through right now, maybe it's a small mercy for him that he doesn't get Damian’s disgusting love . Damian being placed in his care when it was something he never wanted, it is hell enough as it is. No need to burn him by Damian's love. 

Damian curls up under the bed, against the floor and cries himself to sleep as he stares at the glowing paint palette on his right palm and the glowing Indian Robin on the inside of his left wrist.

He longs to see his soul mark on Richard, one day. 

He falls asleep praying that his soul mark never appears and never burns Grayson's skin. 

* * *

  
  


In his room, Dick throws away his shirt and climbs under the sheets. The sea green Nightwing symbol on his chest, spreading its wings all the way from his shoulders to the second and third finger of both his hands, glowed. 

Dick smiled and looked at it. 

It glowed. And didn't dim one bit. 

Despite Damian not showing his love directly, his soul mark often glowed. 

Dick focused on staring at it and not letting himself get distracted with the bitter feeling that this mark glowed and was bright as ever but the Robins on the inside his right wrist weren't. Or that the quill dipped in a fancy ink, on the inside of his left arm had faded. Or that the baby bat blob on the inside of his left wrist was shiny as ever, even if Bruce wasn't here to shine. 

Dick curled in his sheets, tears staining the pillow and tickling his ears. He fell asleep telling himself that right now, when half the people he loved had left him, leaving this plane of existence, and the other half didn't want to do anything with him as they left him here, at least Damian loved him. 

**Author's Note:**

> What are your thoughts?  
> Kudos, comments, bookmarks and user subscriptions are always welcome and appreciated <3 <3  
> If you are over 18 and would love a place to hang out with older fans, you can join the sfw gen batfam discord server [**here**](https://discord.gg/mDQqpjYMa8). We need more Robins!! You need to be over 18 though to join!!!


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